More RAM for an old trusty Ryzen

Ddr4 has got rather cheap and I doubt it’s going to get much cheaper. With that in mind I’ve been thinking about upgrading the RAM on my main PC for quite a while, but I’m still sceptical about actually pulling the trigger. At the moment I’ve a g. Skill flare x 16 GB kit (G.Skill Flare X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 2400 (PC4 19200) for AMD Ryzen Desktop Memory Model F4-2400C15D-16GFX at Amazon.com), which as you can imagine, is decent but very slow, especially for the Ryzen 5 1600 I’ve got.

I was thinking about going to 32 GB ram, but I haven’t found anything about pairing this processor with such a ram amount, and not even with my mainboard (a gigabyte GA-AB350-Gaming 3).

I was looking at a 3200 MHz Corsair vengeance lpx kit (VENGEANCE® LPX 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4 DRAM 3200MHz C16 Memory Kit - Black) since from what I know they’re pretty good compatibility-wise, but they’re not in the mainboard’s qvl. Instead, the qvl has sone random quad channel kits which is why I’m hesitant about this RAM upgrade. Does anyone have a recommendation for a kit that won’t be trouble for my case (since 1st gen Ryzen is very picky about memory)? Thanks in advance.

Just get plain stock JEDEC compatible sticks and your CPU also does 2666MT at best (officially)

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Good lord, get that $160 Ryzen 7 5700X upgrade already, it is the biggest no-brainer for AM4 you can do.

And if not sure, there is also the $85 5500, though not as good price/perf :slight_smile:

Other than that, for AM4 and DDR4 not much to think about just buy a 32 GB 3200 MT/s @ CL16 kit for under $50.

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If I decided to stay on am4 indefinitely I’d get a 5950x, but I’m more keen on moving to a different platform as some of my needs are too much for this system.

Then move on, don’t wait on what you have.

I made that mistake 18 months ago. I could either have replaced a 3400G to a 5700X or wait “just a little bit longer” on the AM5 platform to mature enough. For what I want, I would spend nearly $1000 for the equivalent of what on AM4 cost $600. So I waited for prices to come down a bit. Having an ITX case really bit me in the ass here, as I was assuming the decent ITX motherboards would continue to cost ~$150-$200. They were $300+ until a few months ago (local pricing).

Now I can finally upgrade to a 7900 + ITX + 64 GB RAM board system for $800. I should have just paid $180 for a 5700X 18 months ago, that could’ve let me wait another 12-18 months, easily. Today it doesn’t really make sense to get the 5700X for me as I am no longer strapped for cash.

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The thing is, I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place, because I’m at a loss on which platform should I go with (not to mention the fact I need to save up for such an upgrade, which is basically a new PC). I want many PCI-E lanes, but threadripper is insanely expensive. The best alternative (now that we know how well Intel’s new mainstream chips perform) would be something like the 7950x3d, but then I’d have to deal with dual GPUs at x8 bandwidth (2 GPUs is the key reason I’m looking for a platform upgrade); which is something I’m not sure if I can be comfortable with.

I mean, PCIe these days are just for GPU, disks and possibly network cards. Everything else is better served via USB today. While yes, the AM5 platform is less than ideal… We are talking something like a 1%-2% difference on a PCIe 4.0 / 5.0 x16 → x8. The jump from 3.0 to 4.0 had more impact on performance here.

https://videocardz.com/newz/geforce-rtx-4090-and-core-i9-13900k-pcie-scaling-test-shows-2-difference-between-x16-and-x8-modes

For sound and video you now have USB driven capture cards available. Cheaper models exist too. Internal dedicated capture cards are no longer necessary, at all. And no, digital audio has long since surpassed analog in quality, digital is now indistinguishable to the human ear from analog. That is not to say the specific sound you get from, say, an old 70s LP record is identical - just that it is possible to digitally record and replicate the sound of that LP to a level indistinguishable to the human ear.

I would go with a 9950X and Asus X870E ProArt if I was building a high end machine and wanted to maximize available PCIe lanes:

But, yeah… Unless you really need to run a 4x4090 AI farming rig, there is no point in having more lanes than this. And if you do, Hello EPYC / Threadripper :slight_smile:

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I just want 2 GPUs (I don’t mind not having any nvme drives, the only one I’d be interested in is the Intel optane 900p, which is unobtanium), 1 for bare metal use and one for a virtual machine (video/photo editing too). 1440p/165 gaming is key so I kind of need the 3d v-cache. Apart from that, this article from videocardz is the only thing I’ve found about bandwidth comparisons so far, though who knows how much will that change with PCI-E 5 around the corner?

But first, I can’t shop without money xD

The Corsair kit you’re eyeballing will be fine. It may or may not work at full rated speed with the 1600 (though a 1600AF would almost certainly do it), but you can just enable the XMP profile and then reduce the target RAM speed until it stabilizes.

And, well, you have an AM4 system. 5000 chips are presently dirt nasty cheap and hilariously effective. Even staying at the same core count, and at low TDP, a 1600->5600 upgrade will be more of a positive difference than then going from a 5600->9600X. It’s an honest 60%+ gain versus 20-40%.

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One odd thing about is that it lists SPD speed at just 2133 with JEDEC stock voltage which is rather poor.